


Je me souviens

by AVegetarianCannibal



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Death, Eternal Life, Loss, M/M, Memory Loss, Old Age, Past Tense, Present Tense, Tense Shifts, spirituality, the afterlife, what does it mean to live forever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-04-30 12:58:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14497494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AVegetarianCannibal/pseuds/AVegetarianCannibal
Summary: If it meant keeping someone forever, how far would you go?How long would you live?





	Je me souviens

Hannibal was no longer aging.

Will pointed it out to him one day when they were walking through the market and had stopped in front of a shop window.

“Look at us,” Will said, looping his arm through Hannibal’s. He nodded at their reflection. "When did I catch you?“

"The moment we met,” Hannibal told him.

Will laughed and elbowed him playfully. “I mean my hair is as gray as yours now. When did I catch _up_ to you? You look just the same.”

“There’s a plateau when it comes to aging,” Hannibal said as they resumed their walk through the bustling market, still arm in arm. “A man of fifty looks quite different from a man of forty, but a man of fifty could be the twin of man aged sixty years. It is like a period of idling, when the face, hair and body are deciding just how quickly they want to barrel towards complete entropy.”

“By my count, you’re sixty-four now,” Will said. "That’s past the idling stage.“

"Am I?” Hannibal asked, genuinely surprised. “I suppose I stopped counting. That means you owe me a rather sizable backlog of birthday gifts. I can’t remember getting even one from you.”

“You said you had everything you could ever want,” Will reminded him. He lowered his voice. “The night we killed the Dragon together.”

“So I did,” Hannibal agreed. “No birthday gifts ever, then?”

“Perhaps one,” Will said, moving to step around in front of him and press a kiss to his lips. He winked and added, “Young man.”

***

Of course, he didn’t believe at first that he’d stopped aging. Everything aged. Even diamonds would eventually degrade to graphite. But one night, as Will lay sleeping beside him, he had to consider it. Will was as beautiful to all of Hannibal’s senses as he ever was, but no longer appeared to be his junior. If anything, a stranger might deem Will the older of them both.

If he had to make an estimate, he would say he’d stopped aging some time after he was arrested. He might have been fifty-one when it—whatever “it” was—happened. He might have been a bit older. If he were still a practicing doctor, or had access to one he trusted, he could perform tests. A bone density screening might have given him some clue, or not. He didn’t have quite the scientific curiosity he once did.

What he had was Will, and that was infinitely better.

***

Twenty-two years and just over four months passed from the day of his realization to the day he had to keep vigil at Will’s bedside.

“You’re not going to fight off the Grim Reaper,” Will said. His hand was so small and frail as Hannibal held it between his own. “I’m going to die in this terribly boring, usual way.”

“Nonsense,” Hannibal said. “You’ll live forever.”

“In your memory palace,” Will said, rolling his pale eyes. Sarcastic even then.

“I can’t guarantee there’s an afterlife,” Hannibal said. “So I’ll have to live forever and keep you. What is a soul but the memories we hold inside us?”

Will laughed until he began to cough. Hannibal moved to fetch the oxygen mask, but Will waved it away.

“Imagine me as a young man,” Will said when he’d caught his breath again. “Leave this rickety old body in the past where it belongs.”

“I love your rickety old body,” Hannibal said. “I love every possible iteration of your body because it is yours.”

Again, a roll of the eyes. “As a favor to me, then. I want to be thirty-nine or forty again. And get rid of this forehead scar, would you? That’s the one I never cared for.”

Hannibal brought Will’s hand to his face and kissed his knuckles. “Shall I keep the belly scar? Or only the ones we sustained together as we killed the Dragon?”

“I’ll leave it up to you,” Will said. “One last birthday gift… from me to you.”

Hannibal crawled into bed beside him, careful not to jostle him too much, and lay his head on the bird-thin breast that shuddered with every weakened heartbeat. Will started to make a joke about being in bed with a much younger man, but gave a sharp little gasp before he could finish it, and then nothing else.

***

The world shifts. 

Hannibal’s world shifts. He lives only in the present tense now. 

He takes Will’s ashes to _Giardino delle Rose_ and pays a gardener to look the other way when he buries them under the feet of Folon’s sculpture of a man seated at a bench.

Will appears beside him, young again and dressed unseasonably in a heavy winter coat. He looks around, squinting at the mountains in the distance, then at the sculpture.

“So this is Florence,” he says. The sun is bright and golden on his face. There is no scar on his brow. "Wish you’d brought me when I was _actually_ alive.“

"I thought we had more time,” Hannibal says. When regret wells up, he pushes it back down and focuses again on the _now_. “This garden is an old favorite of mine. Inspired by French gardens of the 1800s, yet not so antique that it didn’t welcome a Japanese oasis designed by the architect Yasuo Kitayama.”

Will nudges the sculpture’s foot with his own. “And this guy?”

“A piece titled _Je me souviens_.”

“’ _I remember_ ,’” Will translates. “Very meaningful, you sap.”

“I’ve always been fond of symbolism, as you know,” Hannibal says. 

“You could’ve just tossed my remains in the ocean,” Will says. “Or you could’ve eaten me, as unappetizing as I was. If I’m going to live in your mind, does it really matter?”

“If I’m going to live forever,” Hannibal says with a shrug, “it might matter to me someday.”

***

For the first hundred years, he shows Will everything he’s ever wanted to show him. Some decades and places are more open-minded than others. They hold hands in public when doing so in the flesh would get others chased off the streets or even arrested. They make love in the sanctuary of Hannibal’s mind, rutting on chapel floors and up against museum walls, invisible to all but one another. Which isn’t so different from how they were together all so long ago.

Over the next hundred years after _that_ , Hannibal finds himself defying his own commandment to live in the present.

Or perhaps it’s not so much a defiance, as it is a kind of exercise. He wants to make certain he can still recall the entirety of his past with Will. He wants to know all the details are still there, just where he left them.

He meets Will for the first time all over again. He doesn’t allow himself to change a single detail, as tempting as it is to imagine himself reaching out to brush the hair off Will’s brow, right there in the middle of Jack Crawford’s office.

He also enjoys going back to the night Will confronted him in his kitchen, his eyes cool and dark, hands steady as they held the gun. He wants to ravish Will then and there, bite up and down the length of his throat and be grasped so tightly in return that his flesh bruises. But it wouldn’t be true to what actually happened.

He ducks out of the memory and into the autumn woods behind Will’s old house. Will is waiting there for him, ankle deep in leaves as he strips out of his clothes. The belly scar is gone, but the scars on his cheek and chest are still there. They fuck so obliviously and for so long that the falling leaves all but bury them.

Afterward they doze side by side until they find their voices again.

“Have you tried to meet anyone else?” Will asks. 

“You would know if I had.”

“Humor me.”

“I haven’t and I don’t care to. I have you.”

“In your mind.”

“There’s no difference between body and mind. Not for me, or us.”

“So, you haven’t gotten laid in over two hundred years?”

“Nobody calls it that anymore,” Hannibal says. “I find my liaisons with you more than satisfying.”

Will laughs up towards the trees. “Surely nobody calls it that, either!”

Hannibal rolls over onto his elbows so he can gaze down into Will’s face. His gleaming hair reflects glints of red from the setting sun and his cheeks are ruddy from exertion. His eyes are the darkest slate blue of the cold Atlantic.

“I’m fond of you,” Hannibal says.

Will grins up at him. “I should hope so.”

“I would forget every piece of music, every work of art, every magnificent landscape I’ve ever seen just to make room for you in my memory. You may become as expansive as you like. Live dozens or hundreds of lifetimes. I’ll remember them all.”

Will reaches up to trace Hannibal’s mouth with his thumb. “Don’t be lonely.”

“I couldn’t be,” Hannibal says. “I have you.”

He bends down to kiss the crooked bridge of Will’s nose, crooked precisely to the same degree it was in life because Hannibal remembers him down to a fraction of a millimeter.

“Do you remember my dogs?” Will asks.

“I believe so.”

“Can you bring them to me?”

Suddenly six dogs come spilling out from Will’s old house, tails high and waving like flags as they bound through the leaves. They tackle Will with slobbery kisses and happy barks. They haven’t seen him in centuries. Hannibal conjures a chain of sausages from his memory and hands them to Will for the dogs.

“If this is your afterlife,” Hannibal says, “then I suppose it’s theirs, as well.”

***

More centuries go by. Hannibal spends a much of the time on one beach or another with Will, sometimes with Will’s five dogs and sometimes not. They go to Greece and Italy hundreds of times, and Australia, too. They visit Japan often. Once in a while Hannibal brings them to his best approximation of a beach in Florida, as he’s never bodily been there.

He also takes Will to rivers and streams where the fishing is good, and he thinks up wonderful catches for him.

“Bring me to Havana again,” Will says. “Go there yourself, for real, and bring me with you. Smell the food and hear the music for me, and not just in your memory. _Live_ there for me.”

“It doesn’t exist outside my mind anymore,” Hannibal tells him. “And in the dusty pages of whatever books still survive.”

Will frowns. He’s up to his hips in the water of some fabricated stream, casting his line in arcs like a spider throwing out a strand of silk. “I notice you don’t take me with you into the real world anymore. Is it that bad?”

“Not everywhere,” Hannibal says. “There are still beautiful places, centers of some culture. They’re simply harder to reach than they once were.”

Will smiles at him. “Good thing you have such a good memory, then.”

“Good thing,” Hannibal agrees.

***

Hannibal meets Will again for the first time in John Crawford’s office. They talk about eye contact and building bridges, just as they did a thousand years ago.

“I loved you from the start,” Hannibal says, and brushes the hair off Will’s forehead.

Will frowns at him. “Is this how it goes?”

Hannibal thinks. He’s revisited this memory so many times, turned it over in his mind as he would a pleasingly smooth stone in his palm. Each time, he replays it just as it truly happened.

“It all changed so slowly,” Will says. “I bet you don’t even remember when my voice started to sound like your own.”

Hannibal gets up from his chair and paces the length of the office. John Crawford gives him a quizzical look, so Hannibal dismisses him from the memory.

“You don’t remember exactly how my voice sounded,” Will says. “You naturally replaced it with your own, over time.”

“I only need to focus to bring it back!” Hannibal snaps, louder than he means to. He kneels down at Will’s side and takes hold of his hands. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t lose my temper.”

Will smiles down at him. “I’ve missed arguing with you.”

Hannibal bows his head into Will’s lap, lets his hair be combed through with gentle fingers. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s been a thousand years, Hannibal,” Will says, his voice mostly his own again. “You’ve replayed and reenacted every conversation we’ve ever had, over and over and over again. Not even _you_ can be expected to have a perfect memory after all that time and repetition.”

He looks up to meet Will’s eyes. “Then what do I do?”

“Revisit the one memory you’ve been avoiding for ten centuries,” Will says. “Revisit the truth.”

Hannibal scoffs. “Avoiding? I’ve never been one to run from the truth.”

“Says the man who never went back to his family home,” Will says. “Who is, incidentally, the same guy who jumped on a plane to France after gutting me.”

“I was running from the law.”

Will laughs, but it’s not a cruel sound. “Oh, come on. Your memory can’t be _that_ bad even now.”

Hannibal stands up and takes Will’s hands in his own to pull him to his feet. “Fine. Then tell me where we’re going.”

“To my grave,” Will says.

***

It takes him a little over three weeks to get to Florence, but that’s barely any time at all to a man who seems to be living forever. He hasn’t ever been back to the precise spot he buried Will, despite his love for the gardens.

Of course the gardens are long gone now. The roses most likely stopped blooming nine centuries ago, or more. _Je me souviens_ is long gone, as well, although there are scraps of what might be bronze in the place that might have been the bench.

He sits amid the rubble and calls forth Will’s spirit.

Will gives a low whistle. “ _Wow._ What a dump. It’s really fallen apart since last time, and it’s hotter, too.”

“Have some respect,” Hannibal says, gesturing beside him until Will sits. “This is sacred ground, after all.”

Will bumps shoulders with him. “Wanna make out? Close your eyes.”

He does as he’s told and feels Will climb into his lap, feels Will’s solid weight settle against him, and feels familiar lips against his own. They kiss under the blazing sun, in afternoon temperatures that anyone still living nearby is wisely avoiding. Hannibal digs through the sedimentary layers of his memory to call forth the smell of the cologne Will used to wear. Instead, he dredges up the salty, metallic tang of blood.

Will pulls back and gives a satisfied sigh. “I only wish we’d done this when I was alive.”

Hannibal pushes away the memory of blood and gives him a soft smile. “What, kiss on your grave? I don’t think that’s the sort of thing one _can_ do when one is still alive.”

Will holds his face in his hands, looks deeply into his eyes.  "Oh, Hannibal,“ he says. His expression is so kind, and so sad. "This isn’t my grave, and you know it.”

***

The past came rushing back at him like a rising tide and deposited him on the rocky beach far below the bluff house. He spat out a lungful of the Atlantic and picked himself up despite the pain that gripped his body.

He found Will twenty yards away, face down on the rocks. The waves relentlessly came for his legs, reaching a little further with each surge, trying to pull him back into the sea.

Hannibal stumbled toward him, pressing a hand as best he could to the bullet wound in his gut. He was certain his collar bones were broken, and several ribs, but it hardly seemed to matter. If he could just get to Will, everything would be all right again.

He dropped to his knees and forced himself to take a moment to feel around the vertebrae in Will’s neck. If anything had broken, moving him could be disastrous. If he had even survived…

Will jolted at his touch and turned onto his side himself. His face was flayed open from his right cheekbone nearly down to his jaw, but he was _alive_ and nothing else mattered.

Hannibal laughed with relief and moved to lay Will’s head in his lap. “We’re alive,” he said. “We’re alive together.”

“I feel like I’m drowning,” Will said, his voice hoarse.

“You’ve surely taken in some water,” Hannibal told him.

Will gave the smallest shake of his head. “No, I—”

Will coughed then and a great quantity of blood came up with it. The smell of it filled Hannibal’s senses, as salty and vital as the sea. Hannibal’s doctorly calm abandoned him. Panic rose in a spike that made his body feel colder and more numb than even the sea had left it. His hands shook as he pressed them against Will’s ribs, exploring.

“I can barely breathe,” Will said, his voice little more than a wheeze.

“Your lungs are punctured,” Hannibal said. His gaze went to the house far above them. If he could get back up there… “I’ll call for help. I’ll turn myself in again. Will, I’ll get help, you have to hold on.”

He started to move, but Will clutched at his hand. “There isn’t time for that, Hannibal.”

“There’s time,” Hannibal said. “We have our whole lives ahead of us.”

“In hell, perhaps,” Will said. He laughed weakly and brought up another cascade of blood. His face was paler than the full moon that watched over them from its lofty perch. Still, he managed to smile. “Promise you’ll meet me in hell. Or… or heaven, if we even remotely deserve it. Do… do you believe in an afterlife, Hannibal?”

“Not with any degree of certainty,” he said. “We live on in the memories of those we leave behind.”

“Then one of us will have to live forever,” Will said. He winced and gasped as something in his body failed him. “ _Oh._ I don’t think that’s going to be me.”

“You will live,” Hannibal said. He brushed the wet hair off Will’s brow and held the left side of his face in his palm. He could feel the pulse fading under the pale skin at Will’s temple. “I’ll give you an entire life—an entire life and an afterlife, as well.”

“W-with you in your memory palace?” Will asked.

“If you wish,” Hannibal said. “You can grow to be an old man.”

Will nodded. “A good, long, boring life, just the two of us sounds…it sounds…”

“He’s gone,” a voice says behind him. “That was the moment he went. The moment I went? It’s all a bit confusing being here _and_ there, if you ask me.”

Hannibal glances back to see Will, as he looked in his seventies, in the pajamas he’d once conjured for him.

Will settles himself down onto the rocks, sitting beside the body of his younger self and Hannibal.

“I forgot you died then,” Hannibal says. "All this time, I forgot you didn't die an old man."

“You didn’t forget,” Will says. “You ran from it. Don’t try to tell me you don’t do that, either. You can let him go now.”

Hannibal kisses Will's cold lips, wishing he’d done it just once when Will was still alive, and eases the body out of his lap. It doesn’t take long for the frothing waves to reach them, and to take its prize to a watery grave far out to sea.

When Hannibal looks up again, the Will sitting beside him is young. There are no scars on his face. Most of the bluff has long since eroded and there’s no sign at all of the house that once perched there.

“Can you bring me my dogs?” Will asks.

A small white terrier with brown ears and a larger, auburn-haired dog appear before them, grinning and wagging their tails. They bound through the shallower edges of the water, splashing each other in some joyous game.

“I know you had more, but those are the only two I remember with any clarity,” Hannibal says. “I’m sorry. After a thousand years, the details escape even my mind.”

Will calls the dogs over, rubs their heads and scrubs over their fur with his fingers, laughing and happy as if they were truly there.

“We _are_ truly here,” Will says. “Or truly enough. If there’s no difference between body and mind, then there’s no difference between your mind and my body, is there?”

Hannibal leans to the side and rests his head on Will’s shoulder. “What happens now?”

Will shrugs. “I dunno. Nobody’s ever lived forever before. I guess we’ll just find out, won’t we?”

“Together?” Hannibal asks.

“Together,” Will promises.

**Author's Note:**

> I treasure every reply I get on a story and I apologize in advance if I don't reply in return. Sometimes I just don't know what to say. So thank you in advance.


End file.
